A fact check­er from a major mag­a­zine wrote ask­ing if Churchill ever declared, “Stal­in nev­er broke his word to me.” The short answer is yes. The long answer shows how care­ful we should be when quot­ing Churchill.

The orig­i­nal source of this quote is the jour­nal­ist C.L. Sulzberg­er (1912-1993), in his 1970 book, Last of the Giants, page 304. Here Sulzberg­er reports his “five hours with old Win­ston Churchill” at Chartwell on 10 July 1956.…